Meet the Harunos, a rather unconventional, but happy and loving family nonetheless. They live in a small town in the mountains just out of Tokyo where life is good and quiet – but that doesn’t mean they don’t have their own little problems.
As 8-year old Sachiko (Maya Banno) tries to get rid of a giant version of herself who seems to pop up everywhere, her older brother Hajime (Takahiro Sato), privately wrestles with his love-struck heart. Meanwhile, their mother Yoshiko (Satomi Tezuka) is working hard, coming out of retirement as an animator, as her husband and professional hypnotist Nobuo (Tomokazu Miura) watches on with slight apprehension. Yoshiko’s brother, Ayano (Tadanobu Asano) is just visiting his hometown and staying with the family, but also has ashidden agenda; he needs to come to terms with a romance that ended years ago. Even Nobuo’s brother and successful manga artist Todoroki has his problems. It’s his birthday soon and he wants to give himself something special. And lastly there’s Grandpa, the most bizarre and perhaps the most perceptive of all, who continues to search for a better way to live life to the full.
Written, directed and edited by Katsuhito ISHII, The Taste of Tea is a unique and gentle family portrait tackling the universal themes of time, people and their lives.Like Ozu’s Tokyo Story, The Taste of Tea takes the long view of a Japanese family, though the eccentric Harunos are unconcerned with the moral quandaries Ozu’s characters typically face. Director Katsuhito Ishii, known in America for his animated sequence in Kill Bill Pt. 2, gives the viewer a comedic slice of life in this artistic family’s rural village. With a mother reentering the animation business, a musical grandfather conceptually akin to Yoko Ono, and a hypnotist father, siblings Hajime (Takahiro Sato) and Sachiko (Maya Banno) have the mental freedom to roam deep into imagined worlds that comprise the film’s core. Hajime’s infatuation with a girl at school becomes an obsession that bears fruit due to his commitment to meeting her. Sachiko’s giant ghost follows her, leading her to believe that if she can master a back flip on the gym bars that she will scare the ghost away. The Taste of Tea relies upon odd, awkward moments of reflection or confusion. Hajime isn’t sure what to make of his Uncle Ayano’s (Tadanobu Asano) story involving a chicken egg in the forest. Similarly, Sachiko runs for her life when a man emerges out of the mud next to her. The absurdity in the narrative is underscored by visual impossibilities, for example a train rushing out of Hajime’s head, and other bizarre live-action animation. Interestingly, each character’s dilemma is based on external forces. Tensions between family members are non-existent in The Taste of Tea, reinforcing the idea that artistic minds must stick together in an increasingly unpredictable world. –Trinie Dalton
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March 26, 2010
#1
The movie is over two hours and twenty minutes long, and would have been much better with about 45 minutes or so left on the cutting room floor.
It’s too bad because the story-telling could quite have been quite good had it been a little more focused. Ishii could have used a trusted friend insisting that he cut his favorite parts.
The story he is mostly charming, but suffers from too many subplots. In fact pretty much everything is a subplot because there are so many characters. As a result none of the pieces ever get fully developed. Without giving away the end, it’s unfortunate that the resolution of one of these subplots winds up acting as a deus ex machina for all the others.
Paradoxically, while the movie was overly long, the story of Haruno family would have made a great 13-part series. That way we could have really gotten to know everyone and the story would have been able to build to the point where we could get a reasonable resolution for all the characters.
As it is you have to take everything in all at once, and the result is disappointing.
March 26, 2010
#2
I watched this recently. Its very creative and uniquely funny. I watched it 3 times so far.
March 26, 2010
#3
One of the most beautiful films I have ever seen. I saw this in 2005 and it was my favorite film of the year, which bled into 2006 and 2007 (until I finally saw “The Lives of Others”). A simple, but quirky, family drama/comedy starring the always fantastic Tadanobu Asano and Anna Tsuchiya from the equally fabulous “Kamikaze Girls”. I’m a big dude, but even I cried at the end, not out of sadness, but it was very touching. This limited edition 2-disc set is filled with special features by the way, so get it while you can, it is so worth it!
March 26, 2010
#4
This movie is about a family. Not a normal, everyday, family. This family, the Harunos, are happy and loving but very weird. The mother wants to break into anime, the father is a hypnotist, the brother is dealing with a new crush, the daughter is dealing with a giant-sized double of herself and that’s just the main members of the family. There is the singing grandfather, the one uncle who is a sound mixer and the other who is a manga artist. Then there is the cosplayers, the baseball playing mob, the cross-dressing male student, the Go Club, the flashbacks, the huge sunflower, the ghost, and so much more.
While funny and, sometimes, down right silly this film is also touching and at its end you feel good and calm.
March 26, 2010
#5
This delightful film by Ishii Katsuhito follows the daily lives of a highly idiosyncratic Japanese family: a 6 year old girl who is quietly observed by a gigantic doppelganger, her older brother who is desperate to find his first love, her manga artist mother, her hypnotherapist father, her uncle who is stalked by a yakuza ghost with a turd on his head, and her loopy Grandpa who appears to be some sort of performance artist.
The film lacks a strong narrative but this doesn’t matter one iota because all the characters are so beautifully drawn. All the performances are fabulous, the somewhat omnipotent Tadanobu Asano plays the uncle and Tatsuya Gashuin is an absolute scream as Grandpa.
Similar in mood to Edward Yang’s Yi Yi: A One And A Two, this film will leave you with the warm and fuzzies. Just sit back and let it charm your socks off.